Posts Tagged ‘Google’

The Marketing Cycle According to Google

June 7, 2009

From marketing strategy and creative execution to analytics and website optimization, Google advertising tools work together to build a truly effective, unified marketing campaign.

Google Marketing Cycle

Google Marketing Cycle

Google divides the marketing cycle into four parts for potential advertisers:

1. Defining your strategy

Your first job is to define your objectives, audience and message. We can help with insights into what users are searching for, what sites they visit and what they do on your sites.

2. Creating your ads

Check out our gallery of creative tools that can help you design smart, useful, innovative interactions: both paid ads with formats optimized for the environment in which they appear and free communication tools that reach users in delightful new ways.

3. Planning and buying your media

We’ve worked to innovate in every stage of media planning and buying – hyper-targeting within a specific media channel, buying that media, making sure your messages actually run, then constantly iterating to improve their performance – with specific tools tailored to each medium.

4. Optimizing your campaigns

Who saw your ads? Did they actually buy something? What did they do on your site? The breadth and depth of data-driven insights offered by our audience and advertising measurement tools enable you to perpetually tweak your marketing communications for maximum ROI.

Google’s new and more broadly defined Marketing Cycle clearly encompasses both media and advertising beyond their initial search advertising product – Google Adwords.

Whether advertisers will embrace or profit from Google’s broader approach to media and advertising remains to be seen.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Commencement Address @ Carnegie Mellon

May 18, 2009

The following are excerpts from Eric Schmidt’s commencement address at Carnegie Mellon’s 112th commencement ceremony, held May 17, 2009.

You cannot plan innovation. You cannot plan invention. All you can do is try very hard to be at the right place and be ready.

How should you behave? Well, do things in a group. Don’t do things by yourself. Groups are stronger, groups are faster. None of us is as smart as all of us.

I wonder what Thomas Edison would think about Mr. Schmidt’s comments above?


Google Searchology: New Search Options

May 12, 2009

Google hosted their second Searchology event today to update its users, partners, and customers on the progress Google has made in search.

Google also uses the event to announce new search features.

Today Google announced a new set of features called Search Options, which are a collection of tools that let searchers slice and dice results and generate different views to find information faster and easier.

Two powerful new Google search options are the Wonder Wheel and Timeline.

Wonder Wheel shows searchers other related terms most often used when searchers are searching for a particular topic while Timeline illustrates the search volume for a particular term within a specific time period.

Twitter Wonder Wheel

Google Wonder Wheel: Twitter

Above, The Google Wonder Wheel shows terms related to searches for Twitter.

Below, the Google search options timeline shows how Twitter has become an increasingly more searched for term on Google over time.

Google Timeline: Twitter

Google Timeline: Twitter

Google Marketing Research Study: The Brand Value of Search

May 10, 2009

Google commissioned OTX, an independent marketing research company, to conduct research to better understand the impact of search impressions on travel brands, specifically the Air, Hotel, Car Rental, Cruise and OTA Travel Categories.

The primary objectives of the OTX project were to determine:

1). Whether or not a search ad can impact key branding metrics.

2). Whether or not a search result’s placement matters.

The study was conducted in an online controlled “laboratory” format that mimicked a real search experience. Subjects were exposed to 1 of 12 search engine results pages (SERP) each of which showed the same search results  and differed only where the test brand’s ad or organic listing appeared.

The results of Google’s Brand Value of Search study are available on YouTube.

Search Advertising Small Business Market Penetration

May 3, 2009

Australian small businesses are in line for some stimulus money from search companies Google and Yahoo.

According to the Australian, “Yahoo Search Marketing is offering businesses $150 in search inventory, while Google is giving away up to $75 per new customer.”

Why?

Its estimated ” just 2 per cent of the 1.9 million small businesses in Australia use paid search advertising. A key reason is that many businesses still do not have a website.”

Search advertising small business penetration in the United States is surely higher isn’t it?

Number of Small Businesses in the United States

Number of Small Businesses in the United States

What percentage of small businesses in the United States buy search advertising?

What percentage of small businesses in the United States have a website?

Google’s Largest Agency Client and Customer?

April 30, 2009

The final issue of Portfolio magazine has an interview with Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP Group.

As head of the marketing communications giant, Sorrell oversees more than 100 companies specializing in everything from advertising to consumer research.

Recently Sorrell had characterized his firm’s relationship with Google as that of “frenemies.”

In the Portfolio interview, Sorrell reclassifies WPP’s relationship with Google as “friendly frenemy” because Google competes with WPP through its acquisition of Doubleclick.

Sorrell then goes on to say what I believe hadn’t yet otherwise been made public before … “we buy about $850 million worth of search advertising from them. We’re their biggest agency customer.”

At an average CPC of $1.00, WPP’s $850 million spend on search advertising with Google would generate 850 million clicks.

Wow.

Although I am not absolutely certain Sir Martin – and unless eBay has doubled or tripled its Adwords spend recently – I think buying $850 million worth of search advertising from Google not only makes WPP Google’s largest agency client – its also makes WPP Google’s largest customer – period.

RIP: General Circulation Print Media aka Newspapers

April 25, 2009

Maureen Dowd writes about the current state of the newspaper industry in her latest New York Times column titled: Slouching Towards Oblivion.

In her article she quotes two key figures from opposite sides of the same content coin; Eric Schmidt and Sam Zell.

Let’s start with the content game’s biggest loser’s comments first – Sam Zell.

Zell now realizes his purchase of the LA Times and Chicago Tribune was “a mistake”.

Zell adds, “It’s very obvious that the newspaper model in its current form does not work and the sooner we all acknowledge that, the better.” Zell also said he probably would not try for a merger because “that’s like asking someone in another business if they want to get vaccinated with a live virus.”

I don’t know about the virus metaphor, but I do know that any business expecting to profit by reaching an audience through sales of print ads is an obsolete business model.

Now to comments from the content games biggest winner – Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, Inc.

Via Dowd, Schmidt, “reassured me that newspapers would last 500 years, but only for a boutique market: commuters taking trains, cabs and subways on the East Coast and in cities like London and Paris.”

“For somebody who lives in the suburbs,” he said, “especially if they’re driving and they have kids screaming in the back seat, why would they prefer a physical newspaper over something that is more personal.”

I don’t know if newspapers will last five hundred years or not but agree those that do survive will do so serving a niche market – not a general market – like the markets every major daily newspaper serves.

In no other way can a print media distribution cost structure begin to even hope to compete with a digital media distribution cost structure.

The new Content Kings will be those who’s business cost structure and distribution model is build on bytes not paper and ink costs and distribution.

Top 50 Web Properties February 2009

March 23, 2009

comScore has released its list of the top 50 web properties for February 2009.

Google remained the #1 web property.

comScore Top 50 Web Properties February 2009

comScore Top 50 Web Properties February 2009

WordPress Domain Change and Google Indexing Issues

March 7, 2009

On January 28, 2009 I moved my several year old blog to a new domain while still hosting the site at WordPress.

In addition to the blog no longer being picked up by Google blog search or Technorati, the new domain hasn’t had any new posts crawled or indexed by Google since switching domains.

Google Search Marketing Communications

Google Search Marketing Communications

I verified the site with Google as suggested several weeks ago yet still no luck.

On the other hand, I haven’t verified the new domain with Yahoo or Microsoft Live.

Yahoo Search Marketing Communications

Yahoo Search Marketing Communications

Yet both Yahoo and Live are crawling and indexing my new blog domain address hosted at WordPress.com.

Live Search Marketing Communications

Live Search Marketing Communications

What gives?

February 2009 WordPress Blog Traffic Stats

March 1, 2009

This blog: Search Marketing Communications generated its seventh highest month in terms of traffic during Febraury 2009 with 6.059 views.

Previously, this WordPress blog’s highest trafficked month was September 2008 with 22,897 views.

Approximately 27% as many views occurred during February 2009 as compared with September 2008.

Why the drop in traffic?

Because I switched this blog from a WordPress.com domain to my own private domain on January 28th and it has yet to get crawled and re-indexed in Google under my new domain name.

The vast majority of traffic this blog received in February 2009 came via search engines to posts written several months ago. Not a single one of my posts from February received any search engine referrals.

WordPress says it could take as long as six months for this simple change to recognized and acted on by Google.

If you are considering switching your WordPress blog to your own domain, you might think twice if you are looking to get search referrals anytime soon after the switch.

By the end of February 2009, searchmarketingommunications.com had been viewed 119,422 times since its launch in September 2006.

In its first month of existence this blog had 1,593 total views.

February 2009 traffic was approximately 4 times greater than September 2006 traffic.

Few people subscribe to this blog, thus the vast majority (an estimated 99% or greater) found this blog through some type of search query, which is why this blog is titled:

“Search Marketing Communications”

Search Traffic February 2009

Search Traffic February 2009

Third Largest Month Blog Search Traffic: 10,154 Views

February 2009 Total Blog Traffic

February 2009 Total Blog Traffic

Total Search Traffic February 2009